Creating Insecurity: on art and culture in the age of security
edited by Wolfgang Sützl

contributors:
Konrad Becker | Geoff Cox & Martin Knahl | Brian Holmes | Norbert Koppensteiner | Daniela Ingruber | Institute for Applied Autonomy | Naeem Mohaiemen | Mukul Patel & Manu Luksch | Maria Stern | Wolfgang Sützl | McKenzie Wark

publication date:
2009

In the words of Giorgio Agamben, security has become the 'guiding concept' of international politics after 9/11, and the 'sole criterion of political legitimation'. But security, reducing plural, spontaneous and surprising phenomena to a level of calculability, also seems to operate against a political legitimacy based on possibilities of dissent, and stands in clear opposition to artistic creativity. Being uncalculable by nature, art is often incompatible with the demands of security and, consequently, viewed as a 'risk', leading to the arrest of artists, and a desertification of innovative environments for the sake of security.

Yet precisely the position of art outside of the calculable seems to bring about a new politization of art, and some speak of art as 'politics by other means'. Has art become the last remaining enclave of a critique of violence? Yet how 'risky' can art be?

The contributors to this volume address these questions at the cross section of art, technology, and politics.

details:

contents: TBC